1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a photographing apparatus, such as a digital camera, for obtaining image data by taking a photograph and storing the obtained image data in a storage means such as a memory card. The present invention also relates to a photographing method for the photographing apparatus and a program for causing a computer to execute the photographing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, when a photograph of a person is taken using a strobe (an electronic flash), there is a problem that the person's eyes glow red or gold in the photograph. This is a so-called red-eye phenomenon. The red-eye phenomenon occurs when strobe light passes through the pupils of the eyes, is reflected at the retinas of the eyes, and the reflected light is captured in a film.
Various systems for automatically detecting and correcting the red-eye as described above have been proposed. Particularly, various photographing apparatuses such as digital cameras have been proposed, which correct the red-eye in image data obtained with the digital cameras, by performing correction processing in the digital cameras, (for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 10(1998)-233929, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 11(1999)-127371, and Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-305141).
However, red-eye correction processing requires detection of a human face in an image, represented by the image data, first, and further detection of the positions of the eyes in the detected face. The red-eye correction processing also requires correction processing for changing the color of the eyes from red to black. Since the digital cameras have much lower processing capacity than personal computers, a long time is required for the red-eye correction processing. Hence, there is a problem that the wait time becomes long until performing a next operation, such as displaying an obtained image on a liquid crystal monitor of a digital camera after photographing, or getting the digital camera ready to take a next photograph.